One of the higher-ups at Butler & Binion was a canny litigator named Pearson Grimes. (Disclosure: I worked as a paralegal at Butler & Binion from 1976 to 1979, before Abbott arrived.) Grimes persuaded Don Riddle, who was then considered one of the best personal injury lawyers in Houston, to represent his young associate in a potential lawsuit. Abbott had been hurt during the heyday of the plaintiffs’ bar in Texas, with wily lawyers regularly winning jury awards and settlements in the seven figures for injured clients. Riddle knew, however, that a tree falling did not necessarily indicate negligence on someone’s part—and negligence had to be shown in order to recover damages. But Abbott made for a sympathetic plaintiff, struck down just as his professional life was beginning. And the owner of the property where the accident occurred was a wealthy divorce lawyer, Roy W. Moore. (He died in 2018.) According to one person who heard the story from Moore, he visited Abbott in the hospital and promised that he would insist that his insurance carrier pay Abbott the highest amount the policy would allow, negligence or no negligence.

Moore was covered for $1 million or so in his homeowners policy, Riddle recalled. “A million dollars didn’t stretch that far if you were damaged for life,” he said. But he discovered that Moore had paid a tree company that was part of a large national chain to do some work on the oak. Riddle could then assert that the repairs might have been done improperly—that more attention had been paid to caring for the tree’s canopy than to protecting and stabilizing the roots. Now Riddle had not one but two deep-pocketed defendants. Through what was then known as joint and several liability, a plaintiff could recover damages from multiple parties so long as some responsibility was established.

By 1986, Abbott had completed his rehab. He wasn’t walking, but he was moving forward in other ways. Riddle had negotiated an impressive settlement that would support his client for the rest of his life. The estimated total of $3 million (about $8 million today) began with an initial lump-sum payment of $300,000 (about $770,000 in today’s dollars), followed by another lump sum of $100,000 in 1989. Abbott would continue to get lump-sum payments every three years, with the last payment of $740,020 scheduled for November 1, 2022—a nice supplement to his $153,750 annual governor’s salary. Additionally, in 1986 Abbott started receiving $5,000 a month (almost $13,000 today) with a built-in annual increase of 4 percent for the remainder of his lifetime. It was all tax-free.